


A Beautiful Night

by boxofbreath, Liliet



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5454812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxofbreath/pseuds/boxofbreath, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liliet/pseuds/Liliet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherit Mayenn has an eventful night and talks to a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liliet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liliet/gifts).



Your name is SHERIT MAYENN and tonight looks to be an interesting night!

After a long argument with your neighbour on the subject of _'good fucking grief, Mayenn, get your dumb-ass flapbeast lusus to STOP DIGGING UP MY LAWNRING'_ , you've finally found the time to sit down at your husktop. You observe your contacts list.

   radicalBeat  
   scintillatingPerihelion  
   criticallyDangerous  
   famacideVigilante  
   temerariousRaconteur  
   myselfExcluded  
   idleOblivions  
   borderlineCatatonic  
   narrowConductor  
   irateAnarchist

With a moment's consideration, you open a chat window with _temerariousRaconteur_.

    **timidCombustion began trolling  temerariousRaconteur!**

   TC: hll nnh!  
   TC: whps knd msscrd yr nm thr  
   TC: srry!  
   TC: nywy hw r y?

While waiting for a reply, you look out of the window at the waning moons.

   TC: sn't t btfl nght?

\---

Your name is NANAOH ISELIA and your night hasn't exactly been boring up until this moment. You are sitting in a dark corner of a desert ship hiding behind the cargo, and because you always play it safe and make rational decisions entirely compatible with self-preservation, have just opened your laptop.

(Dragonmom is twirled at your legs, and is keeping watch. You aren't THAT suicidal.)

After a little waiting and pondering you catch jackpot - Sherit is messaging you. You like her a lot, and think she's very cute, and would talk to her gladly any time day and night.

If only her quirk wasn't like fucking CYPHER!

You spend like a whole minute figuring out what she wrote - okay, maybe you yourself aren't at your best tonight, head still ringing from a too close explosion - and then start typing yourself.

   TR: hey! glad to hear from you!  
   TR: the night sure is amazing! i killed like ten trolls! since evening and im not even kidding! nearly got my leg blown off there! regenerating right now  
   TR: how's your night? hope it's more boring?

\---

You are not sure if she is an assassin of some kind or a compulsive liar.

Frankly speaking, you don't care which - she's just so interesting to talk to!

   TC: wll  
   TC: tht snds ntrstng!  
   TC: hp y r nt n ny dngr?

Oh god, is that even legible?

   TC: nd ys my nght hs bn vry brng  
   TC: thr thn n rgmnt wth my nghbr bt my lss

On your speakers,  _horrorterrorapocalypse_ (your guilty pleasure band) croon about how Alternian society is oppressed and controlled by the seadwelling population.

_"But who am I to judge? What have I to say? There's a raft across the river, but the boatman must be paid..."_

None of your friends understand why you like this stuff.

   TC: btw  
   TC: hv y vr hrd f hrrrtrrrpclyps?

Oh, bugger.

\---

You smile at Sherit's messages. She is one of very few of your friends who don't openly call you a liar to your face, and you kind of appreciate that.

   TR: well im safer! than i was ten minutes ago! dont worry!  
   TR: your neighbours and lusus? whats up with that? you have a flapbeast one right?

You frown at the next message. Her quirk becomes more legible the more you talk to her, but this one is - okay, what's the context?

Have you ever heard of - it's probably some sort of book or movie or tv show or  
oh, a music band! You thank all the gods that exist or don't for having, in fact, heard of what you think she's referring to, if very cursory and mostly not good things.

   TR: i have heard of horrorterrocalypse! if that's what you were saying!  
   TR: i think i heard a couple of their songs? not sure i made out the lyrics!  
   TR: are they something about lots of water?

You strongly suspect that there's lots of subtext to that water, but you aren't exactly well acquainted with the band, and the subtext might or might not be entirely in your head. You aren't particularly fond of seadwellers, especially because of how prone to thinking you their helpless prey they are.

They aren't exactly helpless prey themselves. You finger your leg, grimacing from pain, checking the alignment of growing bones - it's going to heal one way or another, but you'd rather it wasn't crooked.

Lots of water, yeah...

\---

   TC: hh ys!  
   TC: thr prtty mch mst pplr sng s sm knd f prtst sng bt sdwllrs  
   TC: tbh mst f th tm hv n d wht thy'r sngng bt

They're one of those 'underground' bands who nobody  _really_ understands. They have a pretty heated fanbase, who spend most of their time arguing about what the hell 'Nature' is supposed to represent.

You're afraid to say your largest contribution to the 'bandom' was buying a t-shirt with _'The boatman must be paid'_ printed in an interesting font across it.

   TC: nd my nghbr s crrntly ngry t m fr ltting my lss dg p hs prcs flwrbds

\---

...Huh.

You weren't actually expecting the band to REALLY be singing what you thought they were singing.

You wonder how they are still alive - seadwellers aren't exactly known for their kind temper. Although maybe it's just that your experiences away from civilization are slightly skewed... nah, you are pretty sure that's the norm.

   TR: and seadwellers? are okay with that?  
   TR: wow!  
   TR: and wait? what did your lusus do?

You aren't even sure you have the right frame of reference for this. You haven't lived in a proper lawnring since... well, since earlier than you remember.

Sometimes you kind of wish you were. Especially when you can't move your leg without a wave of excruciating pain shooting up from the foot all the way up the spine and into the head and by your subjective experiences also through your skull and up into the stratosphere. Your pants are ruined, too, you had to cut them away to make the regeneration easier.

On the other hand...

Well, to be honest, it's not like you never had a chance to settle down. There are lots of abandoned hives scattered all around livable and often not so livable places. You could take your pick of one least offensive to your (mostly non-existent) architectural sensibilities and with the best view.

But you'd have to settle for just one view, and that bargain never did seem worth it. And it's not like you can't solve the puzzle currently in front of you with your own life experience, too...

   TR: dg - dig? what?  
   TR: oh right! flowerbeds!  
   TR: sorry! im just slow on uptake with things like that sometimes!  
   TR: i only ever see flowerbeds! when i pass quickly by! trying to not alert the owner! to my presence!  
   TR: or they end up! dug up by explosions!  
   TR: like whoops!  
   TR: lol  
   TR: okay not really! sometimes i just pass by! and look at how they are pretty and stuff!  
   TR: i just dont think! about them a lot! lol

\---

Hah. Haha. Like you'd listen to music that is, in theory, against Imperial law. Fancy little old you doing a thing like that.

   TC: tbh sdwllrs rn't ky wth nythng n my xprnc  
   TC: nd gss thts wht th sng s bt  
   TC: bt dk!

And... what's all this about flowerbeds? And... explosions?

  TC: tht snds ntrstng bt ls lttl sd  
  TC: dn't y hv flwrbds n yr hvrng?  
  TC: dn't prsnlly bt s sd my nghbr hs  
  TC: h's vry prtctv f thm

Your neighbour and his flowerbeds is a bit of a running joke in your village. It's rumoured that the reason he has no quadrantmates is because he's too busy weeding his moonflowers.

 --

You snort. Maybe it really is the same everywhere, and the key to survival is not to evade the wrath of seadwellers, but to not make it worth it to them to pursue you. Quite a few of people you've had trying to kill you in your life are, in fact, still alive - you just have good reasons to assume they aren't going to willingly re-appear in your life again.

And of course nice little Sherit can't imagine anyone living not in a lawnring. You have it on good authority that trolls settling down outside of one actually have a better life expectancy... past wigglerhood, that is.

(As you settle into the rhythm of a conversation, it keeps getting easier to figure out what she means. Still takes some knowledge of her mindset and things she's likely to say, but you are fairly certain you are reading everything right!)

   TR: i dont live! in a lawnring!  
   TR: i keep telling you all! and you all keep! not believing me!  
   TR: but i really don't!  
   TR: i did when i was a wiggler! i think!  
   TR: but it was all destroyed!  
   TR: so i don't! have one now!  
   TR: dont really want to either!

You are pretty sure that last one isn't a bold-faced lie. If you did, you would have done just that! Not that much of a problem...

You do sometimes wish, however, that there was one you could just visit. Somewhere with a friend willing to tolerate the presence of another troll for a couple of nights. And it's not that you don't have friends at all - but none of them have invited you to stay over yet...

The bouncing of the ship you've been sitting in subsides and finally wheels screech in stopping, and you, still holding onto your laptop, peer outside. It seems you are at an edge of the desert, having a stop at some sort of small village.

And Sherit's gone and made you all wistful about lawnrings and flowerbeds...

Not giving the matter a second thought, you close the laptop, shove it into your backpack, wait until your corner of the ship is safely out of anyone's line of sight and quietly scurry over, trying to put as little weight on your half-regenerated leg as possible. Your lusus scouts ahead and shows you the way to a nice little nook behind and slightly under someone's creatively shapely hive.

You settle down (hissing with pain and trying to realign the bones) and, after some looking around and ensuring there really isn't an angle you'll be visible from unless someone decides to specifically go into this particular corner (and the cobwebs tell you that isn't too likely), take out your laptop again.

It's been just a couple of minutes, if filled with commotion and mild excitement. Hoping your chat partner hasn't gone off yet, you don't even wait for their messages to load before typing

   TR: really sorry! about that!  
   TR: i just arrived somewhere!  
   TR: dunno where lol!  
   TR: are you still here?


End file.
